


Falling Man

by torches



Series: Second Chances/Guilt is a Useless Emotion [1]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-07
Updated: 2004-09-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torches/pseuds/torches





	Falling Man

Asuka's bandaged hand came up to trace Shinji's cheek, listlessly, then fell to her side once more. Shinji gasped. All the strength went out of his arms, and they fell away. His eyes traced her face for any sign of life, or any movement. There was none, except that damnable dead eye and that empty bandaged socket. He broke down, shuddering, gasping, all the tension leaving his body. Tears began to pour from his eyes. Oh, if only she would say something! _Say something, please, please, so I don't feel alone. So I can forget._ Shinji's tears fell on her face and chest, hot and wet, fat with despair.

"Feel sick," Asuka said, voice hoarse and tired. The salty red-orange liquid of the sea of souls lapped at her feet, and Shinji collapsed onto her chest in exhaustion.

\--

It came without warning, a thin band of yellow against the black, cloudless sky. The mountainous crater came alive with light. A hesitant tendril touched the boy and girl sleeping by the shore, flickering back and forth as if unsure what to make of these two alien creatures.

The boy woke first, blinking and rubbing sleep out of his eyes. He looked about in confusion, then his eyes focused and he remembered. He noticed the light spreading across the crater, and his eyes lit up. "Look, a sunrise!" Shinji said, shaking Asuka awake.

Asuka stirred, spitting sand out of her mouth and shifting around in her cherry-red plug suit. She glared at him. "Gott sie dammt," she grumbled. "Let me sleep." She wrinkled her nose. The air smelled like blood and sweat.

Shinji stared at her. "But . . ." He fumbled for words. He fiddled with the collar of his white shirt. "It's the first sunrise," he said, "you know, the first one after . . . I just thought it might be important."

"I don't care," Asuka said. "This isn't my world." She shifted onto her right side. "You just stuck me in it."

Shinji held his hand over his eyes to cover them and watched the sun crest the lip of the crater. "I'm sorry," he said. He looked over at her back.

Asuka muttered. "Stupid Shinji." She furrowed her brow. "Had to be stuck with you. Rest of the world turned into LCL, and you yanked me out because you were lonely. Haven't changed at all. Still an idiot." She bit her lip.

Shinji stared at her. His shadow spread across the small of her back. "I'm sorry."

"What do you want, sympathy?" Asuka said, sneering. "Instead of apologizing all the time, why don't you leave me alone?"

Shinji stared at the sand. "Do you want to be alone?" he said. He began to trace patterns with his right hand.

"Yes," Asuka growled.

Shinji sighed. "You already are." He fell back onto the sand, staring up at the orange sky. "I'm sorry." He closed his eyes.

Asuka didn't respond. Minutes passed. Shinji continued to stare at the sky. Asuka sniffed. A tear slipped from beneath her eyelid and fell on the white sand. She bit her lip.

"You're not strong enough," Shinji said. Out of reflex, he added, "I'm sorry."

"Goddammit," Asuka said between tears. "Stop with the fucking apologizing!" She sat up. "For a guy who just turned all but two human beings into orange pea soup, you're pretty damn pathetic."

Shinji kept staring straight up. "I know," he said.

"Bastard," Asuka said. "Why did you bring me back?" Tears fell to the ground, fewer now, swallowed up and burned away in the heat of anger. Anger had saved her in the past. Humans were nothing but creatures of habit.

Shinji put his hand on his chest and fiddled with his white shirt. "You really want to know why?"

"Don't play the dummy with me, Third Children." Shinji glanced over into Asuka's glowering brown eyes. She had inched closer.

"I needed someone to remind me that I was still human," Shinji said. He smiled, a bittersweet smile. "It's funny how easy it is to forget what that really means."

Asuka snorted and jerked her head away. "You're just like Kaji. All you want is to use me to your own benefit." Her voice was tainted with bitterness.

Shinji's eyes widened. He remembered –

_"You're nothing like Kaji. You're so dull."_

– so what had happened? Something had changed. Had he changed that when he brought her back? He had only wanted – he had gotten what he needed. He squinted. "I'm sorry."

Asuka used her good arm to pull herself along the sand away from Shinji. "Sanctimonious asshole."

Shinji stared at her. Silence stretched between them like cobwebs spread by a dying spider. The red sea lapped at the shore. Red, like blood. Like Ayanami's cold gaze. Shinji looked out over the sea. "I wonder what they think of us, cut off and mortal," he said. "If they feel sorry for us."

"I wouldn't know," Asuka said. Her voice stung Shinji's ears, burned his heart with venom.

Shinji gripped the sand. An old quote from their English lessons sprang to mind. _Prick us, do we not bleed? Wrong us, shall we not revenge?_ "But you hope they don't," Shinji said. "Don't you, Asuka?" Her sudden flinch told him the answer. Guilt flushed through his body, but he bit back an apology. She deserved it. She deserved it. "No, she doesn't," he said. He crawled to Asuka's side and put his hand on her shoulder. Asuka tensed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Liar," Asuka said.

Shinji reared back. The memory came back to him, all too vividly –

_"You don't need me. Anyone will do!"_

– and he was nearly overcome by it. "I am not!" he said.

"You wanted to hurt me," Asuka said. "And you enjoyed it. Are you satisfied, Third Children? Does it make you feel better to know the Second Children can be hurt too?" She continued to face away from him, shifting to prevent the sand from getting into her plug suit.

Shinji flexed his right hand. "No," he said. "No, it doesn't." He almost stopped there, but something inside him pushed hard against the silence, so he continued. "I – I saw, Asuka. I saw what happened. In Unit 02. Uh . . . to your mother. I'm sorry. For not being there."

Asuka lay still. "What . . . what did you see?"

Shinji lay back and looked out over the sea, at the crucified statues of the Eva series. "I . . . I saw a lot. Maybe everything. But mostly I saw myself. Who I thought I was, and who I really was. I learned a lot of things. A lot of things I guess I should have already known." He paused. "I need you, Asuka. I don't think I ever recognized that fact before."

"Sure you did, in those little jerk-off fantasies you had in that little hospital room," Asuka said, voice dripping with bitterness.

Shinji seized up, shuddering. "Don't tell me you . . . saw that . . ."

"I'm not sure. I think . . . I was asleep," Asuka said. "But all the same, I remember you doing it. Bastard." She sighed. "What did you do to me?"

"I – nothing, I swear. I just wanted someone to be near me."

"You did something to me. Things in my head . . . aren't right. Sometimes, I'll think about something . . . and the thoughts won't add up, like there's something else in my head, just outside my perception. Sometimes I'll think about Rei, and it won't be me thinking about her – it'll feel like I'm thinking about _myself_." Asuka shivered. Her leg shifted back and forth in the sand.

Shinji stared at nothing. "I wish I knew," he said. "I don't understand. I just needed someone to keep me company, to make me forget how alone I felt."

"As if that's even possible," Asuka said. "People are people because they're alone. Isn't that why they all turned into LCL? So they wouldn't have to be people anymore, wouldn't have to be alone?" Her shoulders twitched. "It hurts being alone, Shinji. I want to be part of that sea. But you won't let me."

"I'm sorry." Shinji couldn't think of anything else to say.

Asuka sniffed. "I hate you, Shinji."

Shinji glanced at her back. "I know," he said. He stood up and started walking towards the edge of the crater.

-I'm afraid.-

Shinji stared out over the rocky edge of the crater. Red sea, black rock, and white sand as far as the eye could see. The earth was angry and sad, and it would be this way for a long time. "Almost like a mother would be," he said. "Her children have gone away." Shinji scanned the horizon. He was feeling remarkably calm. He looked up at the charred spike of metal jutting out of the ground next to him. His eyes caught on the white cross that hung upon it, suspended from a wayward nail. "Misato . . ." Shinji ran his fingers along the edges of the cross. "Are you out there in that sea, too? Are you proud of me?" He knew he would not get an answer. He would never get an answer. He had only gotten an answer once before –

_"You did a very good thing today, Shinji. You saved the city. You should be proud."_

– and it was so long ago –

_"That was a grown-up kiss. We'll do the rest when you get back."_

– how could he know she still cared for him? If she still remembered him? She was either dead or just one part per trillion of LCL. He had killed everybody. His own weakness destroyed Asuka – but she wasn't dead anymore. He didn't even know if she had died. When Third Impact occurred . . . what happened to him? In that grand momentary flash of omnipotence, he remembered the Sub-Commander mentioning something about him becoming God. Was that true? Had he become God? "I am the resurrection, and the life," Shinji said, softly. He shook his head. It didn't fit. It wasn't right. He wasn't that arrogant.

Shinji held his hand up in front of his face. He didn't feel all that powerful. If he were totally honest, he felt like shit. He felt horrible, Asuka hated him, and everyone was dead. Everything in that thought was normal, except the last part. It meant all he'd done was make things worse. Shinji leaned against the spike. "I've spent all my life muddling through." He sighed. "Even Eva . . . it was just a way to get people to notice me. So I wouldn't feel so alone. And then, when I stopped . . . nobody cared about me. I was just . . . existing." Coasting through life, in the least offensive way possible, the laziest way possible, so detached from the rest of the world, they might as well have not even existed. He wondered who was the judge in the end. Was it God or was it Shinji who had ultimately found him lacking? Shinji stared up at the sky. "I made a choice," he said, "when I came back. I told you I'd live instead of just existing. Am I living? Nothing's changed. Things have only gotten worse – for me and for Asuka. Especially for Asuka. She didn't want to come back. She wanted to be a speck in the sea. And I took her away from that, out of selfishness." He slipped down onto the ground, resting his back against the spike. "Tell me, God, do I still deserve to live? Even after what I've done?"

There was no answer. Like Misato, Shinji knew he would not get an answer. The white cross rattled against the metal spike in the wind. Shinji stood up, facing away from the sun, and began the slow walk down towards the seashore. Asuka still lay there, back to him. Shinji stared at the back of her head, at the bandage encircling her skull. He remembered the sickening lurch of metal sliding through living tissue, and her scream before Unit 02's internal power finally failed. He wondered if he'd given her back her eye when he brought her back to life. He stopped a few feet in front of her.

Asuka rolled over to face him. "Do you know," she said, "why my eyes aren't blue anymore?"

Shinji wanted to ask her if that meant she had both eyes, but he doubted it. It was just the phrase. "No," he said. "I guess it's my fault somehow."

Asuka sat up, still looking at him. "I think it's because I died. I died, and there wasn't enough left of me when I came back to remember I had blue eyes, and like those parts of my memory that don't fit, I think you just winged it and you gave me the eyes you remembered the best." She stared at his feet. "I think you wanted a happy memory to look at when you woke up instead of a sad one."

Shinji sat down across from her. He looked at her eyes. Asuka stared dully back at him. He remembered –

_"Get up, Shinji."_

_"Guess what? You're not dead yet, so you might as well make the most of it!"_

– those eyes. Those wonderful, brown eyes that had smiled at him, and kissed him. His last happy memory. One that he'd barely even noticed until it was already over, and he saw the doors shut. Moments later he'd felt the elevator shake before the doors opened, and he knew. She was dead, and he would never see her smile again. Shinji turned away. "I think I picked a sad one anyway," he said.

"Too bad," Asuka said. She didn't smile. She only dipped her head, acknowledging him. "You must feel sad."

"I suppose," Shinji said. At least she doesn't hate me, he thought. It was just a momentary thing. "I'm used to it."

"Just like you are to being alone," Asuka said. She shivered. She shook her head and her red hair – her fiery, bright red hair – whirled and twisted around her face like coiled snakes. "Just like me."

Shinji stared at her, saying nothing. Asuka's red hair. The two red knobs of her sync-headset. Her red-orange plug suit, crossed with black bands on the legs and back.. Her brown eye. The white bandage around her left eye. The faded, beige gauze wrapped around her right arm. The red sea. The white sand. The dark brown, nearly black rocks. "You belong here," he said at last. "Just like I do."

Asuka tried a smile. It looked more like a grimace, as if she'd forgotten how to do it. "I want my momma," she said. "I miss her." Shinji moved to sit next to her. She fell on Shinji's shoulder.

Shinji stared at her red hair as it splayed across his shoulder and his chest. This was why he wanted her here. He wanted her here for moments like this. Because, just for a moment, here, right now, she made him forget he was alone. He wanted to save this "other," this foreign body, and protect it from harm. He was not alone when he was a protector. He put his arm around her slim waist. He knew what to say, for this moment alone, that would protect her. "So do I, Asuka," he said. "So do I."

And, sitting next to each other, alone on the beach, they waited for the tears that never came. They sat there like that for a long time, and neither one of them spoke and neither one of them moved.


End file.
